Persephone
by Amanthya
Summary: Sarah has tasted the forbidden fruit, and it's not without consequences. When the Goblin King tires of toying with her from a distance, he sees to it that she fulfills her obligation. T for adult themes, NO LEMON.


A/N: Plot-bunny nibbled on me during my work lunch-break, and here is the result. I am supposed to be working on other fics-actually, I'm supposed to be focusing on finals...but, here you go. PLEASE REVIEW! I will not threaten anyone with pain for not reviewing, but it's sort of disappointing to see a fic get fave'd without any comments-you never know what exactly people liked about it.

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**Persephone**

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"You belong to me. I own you."

Sarah opened her eyes, staring blankly upwards at the bare white ceiling, gray now in the diffused light. Outside her window in her parents' house, a tree branch tapped the glass in time to the howling of the wind. For a moment, she still heard the words, the masculine voice so confident-smug, really. She reached her hand up and touched her brow, afraid to touch her hair where a strong hand had glided over the dark-brown tresses so possessively.

_'Breathe,'_ she reminded herself, taking a deep breathe, and then another, calming her racing heartbeat. _'It's just a dream.'_ But she didn't close her eyes again until the light of dawn was bright enough to see about the previously dark corners of her room.

Her schedule turned upside-down and was lucky that she had only online classes; no teacher cared if she stayed up all night in order to avoid sleeping-and dreaming-in the unsecured blackness. Her step-mother was annoyed, though, and brought it up when Sarah was transitioning.

"You're keeping Toby up," she'd argued. "He wants to stay up late like you when he sees the light under your door."

She'd fought the inner teenager's urge to roll her eyes, keeping her voice level. "He's six; he's not the boss of you." _'And you're not the boss of me.'_ "Learn how to say no."

Karen threw up her hands, turning to her husband, mostly hidden at the breakfast table behind his newspaper, except for the hand maintaining its grip on the white coffee mug. "Robert!" she said insistently, demanding his involvement in this spat. "Tell her that's not the point!"

"That's not the point, Sarah," Robert said obediently, then spoiled this show of support by adding, "Sarah's twenty now, Karen; she can arrange her schedule however she wants, as long as she isn't being loud past nine."

Sarah smiled faintly, tilting her head to silently acknowledge her victory, unmoved by Karen's wordless glare.

Sarah was not smiling now, though, as the sun dipped farther below the horizon, creating the most astonishing array of orangey-reds and golden-yellows and pinky-purples that she'd ever seen. But the dusky blue that followed behind the brighter shades, eating them up, brought with it a tightening in her stomach. And to think, she'd used to love the color of midnight-blue-with-stars.

She'd stayed up to watch a daytime movie. She hadn't had any coffee. Her eyelids kept fluttering. She didn't even feel herself slump forward at her computer desk, arms spreading out comfortably to cushion her head, already in the first stage of thought-scattering REM-sleep before her head got all the way down.

"Have you ever heard the story of Persephone, Sarah?" Jareth asked, walking around her, a crystal sparkling slightly in his right hand, his left side to her. She followed him with her eyes, taking note of the dark shadows obscuring any walls around her and the glimmering golden swirls on the white base of the marble floor she stood on-molten gold in the dim light. She was dressed only in her simple white calf-length nightgown; a pure maiden to his dark knight. He paced around her once more, boots making no sound on the coldl floor, then stopped before her.

He held up the crystal, which had become a pomegranate. The faint burnished light around them, as of chandeliers she could not see, dimmed the natural healthy red glow of the fruit, turning it into a dark object of uncertain potency and purpose.

"Do you know what happened to her?"

She went to speak, found her throat tight and dry, and didn't chance it. She nodded slowly, feeling the pulse jumping in her neck and hearing it in her ears.

She jumped; his voice was in her ear, his breath warm on her, and she shivered in awareness of something she couldn't quite explain, something she'd never noticed the first time...

"She was forever tied to the dark lord of the underworld," he refreshed her memory despite her answer. He released the pomegranate, which became a crystal once more when free of his fingers and fell to her feet. She started, fearful of broken shards, but it didn't shatter as she'd expected, disappearing in the blink of an eye.

"And why should you not be held equally accountable, Sarah?" He was before her again as she raised her eyes. His own fascinating mis-matched ones met hers coolly, glinting in the faint light. "You too, have tasted the forbidden."

She closed her eyes, feeling the tension in her jaw as she clenched her teeth on words of denial that rose up in her throat. But she knew, even before something soft and round was placed into her hand, and she opened her eyes to see a single small peach in her grasp, perfect but for one bite taken from it.

"You belong to me."

When she woke up again, she turned her head to stare out her window. The skies beyond it were blue but dusty, the air heavy with wind-tossed sand that smudged everything one saw for miles around. Hot, and dry, so dry she felt she'd be thirsty all of her life; every bit of moisture was slowly but surely being sucked from her body from the outside and in. She got out of bed and reached for, then grimaced and ignored, the silver pitcher and cup on the bedside table, going out to the balcony, warm even in her thin nightwear. The still air inside the castle offered no relief to this uncomfortable state.

Jareth turned as she approached, still in his favorite black despite the heat, and regarded her with undisguised satisfaction. "It is to your unfortunately loss that you have tied yourself to the Underground," he said easily, "for four months out of every year. I, however, intend to make the most of it."

'What are you going to do?' She didn't ask, forcing herself to swallow and lift her chin, eyeing him composedly. "Why four? I only took one bite."

He smiled, an un-nice smile filled with unholy glee. "You do not set the rules, Sarah." And he simply refused to explain to her how he'd decided upon four, which was not unlike him-for he was a terrible cheat, that way, allowing her and others to lose games in new and unusual ways they hadn't know were possible, she would come to learn-and she would also come to be grateful it was not more. Like forever.

_'But this is worse...'_ she pushed the thought away as she came to stand beside him, surveying the land as though indifferent, pretending she did not mind the thought that every year she would lose an uncertain and every-changing amount of time in the "real world" to serve his pleasure, never fully grounded in either world

"You had no power over me," she said calmly, glancing aside at his reaction to these words, ignoring the goblins below her in the distance that were fighting over a chicken that was squawking in response to its abuse at their hands. Nor did she react to the bawdy, drunken songs or clash of metal on metal as others got into the weaponry and staged a mock-war.

"I didn't," he agreed serenely, shifting his position to more fully invade her personal space. "Not according to my own rules. The peach, however, binds you to the land itself-of which I am a part." That smug smile again, eyes alight with pleasure at this turn of events. "And I think you shall find, upon examination of your beloved book-" yes, she had seen it on the table beside the water-"that there are no rules to keep one safe from the intentions of the natural citizens of the land to which they are enslaved, however temporarily or briefly."

"I remember that," she said tightly, feeling the first flush of irritation leak through enforced calm, rising up in her chest at that expression on his face that so made her want to strike him. _'It won't do any good,'_ she told herself with her new-found maturity and self-restraint, so noted and remarked upon only months ago by coworkers and friends.

"The more you consume in our land, the tighter the binding is," he pointed out pleasantly. He reached out and ran the back of his fingers lightly down her bare arm as he spoke again. "In time, you shall belong entirely to my land, Sarah." His eyes were dark with promise, pupils widening until they almost completely obscured the color of the irises. They were deep pools, pulling her in...inviting her to drown.

She jerked back, out of his reach. He only laughed, clasping his hands together in front of himself and tilting his head to look her over.

She un-gritted her teeth, rising to the challenge. "Then I won't eat," she growled out.

"For four months?" he returned, amused.

"I don't know if time is slower or faster here," she admitted grudgingly, advancing on him with a courage she didn't truly feel under the shield of anger, "and I don't care." She glared up at him, irritated she had to look up to meet his gaze, annoyed her anger didn't move him. "I don't care if I starve to death. I won't be here any longer than I have to be, even if it means dying!"

His smile remained fixed on his face as the pleasure faded from his eyes, regarding her determination. He did not back away. After a long moment, he said, "I believe you would." Another silence, his lips flattening out. "Well, we can't have that." He turned away abruptly, so startling her that she swayed slightly as he lifted his head to sky, once again staring out over his land, pondering the problem of Sarah. "I will give in to this one agreement: nothing you consume will add to your time in my land." He turned back to her, offering one hand out, palm up. A parchment appeared on it, half-unrolled.

Against her will, she stepped forward in curiosity, seeing the aforesaid words before her in old-fashioned script. She lifted her face to his, brows drawing together. He merely smiled. "I do not wish your untimely demise to spoil my enjoyment of you." He pulled the paper back. "Here: I shall begin." He pulled a writing quill from thin air, unrolled the little scroll further, and blithely signed his name. He set it on the wide balcony rail, quill ready.

Frowning at him, she waited until he stepped back before stepping forward to look over his signature. Finally, feeling the first cramps of hunger in her stomach, she reached for it and added her own mark, dropping the quill back down.

His smile returned in full measure. "How perfect." He tossed the quill into the air, where it vanished, and unrolled the scroll completely. "You really must learn to be less trusting, Sarah." Holding it with one hand on each unrolled end, he presented the paper for her inspection, and her eyes widened upon noticing the additional smaller print at the top, previously unseen.

**"I, Sarah Williams, agree to the willing exchange of the use of my body by the Goblin King Jareth, it being given with no bitterness or reluctance, for his satisfaction at any and all times during my stay in the Underground, in return for his agreement to the understanding that any foodstuffs I consume shall not extend the duration of my stay."**

The bottom part, which she had seen, was entirely redundant in regards to its ending and had fully served its purpose in deceiving her. She gaped at him, the heat in her cheeks finding its source in both her anger and her complete embarrassment. For how long had he planned this, disrupting her sleep with nightmares-or had this come to him at a moment's inspiration? It didn't matter; the binding was complete, the pinch of the magical contract making itself known upon her soul.

He laughed as he folded the parchment in on itself and it vanished before her stunned eyes. "I meant what I said, Sarah; you belong to me."


End file.
